Guest Post: Can college sports success help you win elections?

Good morning, and thanks for your continued support of Extra Points.

I’ve got my head down on a few back office-type projects here at Extra Points, including big updates to Extra Points Library. So today, I’m passing the sticks to regular Extra Points contributor, Dr. Katie Lever. 

Her submission comes from a running conversation we’ve had over the last few months. Tim Walz leaned pretty heavily on his experience as a former assistant high school football coach in his ultimately unsuccessful run for Vice President. We’ve had plenty of other politicos who had college sports experience. Some have won their races (Tommy Tuberville, Lori Trahan, Tom Osbourne), and others didn’t, like Craig James or Bud Wilkinson.

So…does this strategy work or not? What did the winners, or losers, have in common?

Let me turn the time over to Dr. Lever:

Politics and sports sometimes collide in unexpected ways, especially during election years, when it's not uncommon for politicians to flex their (literal) muscles for a boost on the campaign trail. Last November reminded voters of all political parties of the proclivity of politicians to allude to their athletic experience as a marker of their political competency. Take “Coach” Tim Walz, for example, whose recent vice presidential campaign centered largely around his midwestern values: hunting, family, and his experience as a high school football coach. It was a somewhat surprising brand for a democratic candidate, and one that nodded more toward conservatism than plenty of left-leaning politicians. 

And it was one that ultimately failed as Donald Trump and JD Vance beat out Walz and Kamala Harris this past November. 

A losing strategy?

Walz is far from the first politician to lean on athletic experience as a marker of political competency, and athleticism has been linked to a variety of non-physical personal strengths and virtues for centuries, for better or worse. We’ve seen many other politicians, like Craig James, Tom Osbourne, Tommy Tuberville, and others do the same to varying degrees of success. And, as Walz is proof of, it’s not just conservative politicians who are prone to do this, especially as legislation affecting college athletes has been steadily gaining traction in recent years–Corey Booker, Richard Blumenthal, and Lori Trahan, all of whom have introduced, supported, or weighed in on college athlete-centric legislation, have referred to their experience as college athletes to bolster their credibility.

Former University of Oklahoma football coach, Bud Wilkinson, is one of the most famous cases of this phenomenon because many directly tied his competency as a three-time national-championship-winning coach to his political potential in the 1964 Oklahoma Senate race. 

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